


Lover's Lies

by KHart



Series: No I Won't Be Afraid, Just As Long As You Stand By Me [1]
Category: Power Rangers, Power Rangers (2017)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, I hope that's okay, The rangers are more susceptible to injuries in this fic, the storyline requires it, they can be hurt more similarly to normal humans in this universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-05
Updated: 2017-04-05
Packaged: 2018-10-15 05:02:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10550502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KHart/pseuds/KHart
Summary: Trini honestly just has a lot of feelings, and she's not very good at dealing with them. There's a lot of angst, but also a high chance of a happy ending, if you're into that sort of thing.





	

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this fic is based off of Naomi Scott's song of the same name. I hope you all enjoy my first Trimberly fic! It's around 11,000 words sooo... We'll have to see how this goes. I'd love if you would follow me on Tumblr; My name is flairfatale. Thanks for reading, and I hope you like it!

Trini hadn’t planned on letting it get so bad… 

Really, she hadn’t.  

She’d honestly just wanted to get some space between her and Kim for a few days so that she could work through the overwhelming feelings that had become just a _bit_ too hard to handle; That had started to remind her, every day, of how very deeply and irrevocably in love with the other girl she was.  

She’d honestly just wanted a few days to plan and practice how she would handle these feelings whenever she was around Kimberly. She’d just needed some room to breathe for a little while, some time to catch her breath before she started drowning in everything again.  

So, she _really hadn’t planned_ , or even _wanted_ , for things to get so bad, for the distance to get so large.  

It’s just that once she created the distance, she became suddenly scared of closing it once more.  

Because the distance felt good; It felt like a reprieve on her constantly aching heart, to not hear Kimberly’s voice, or see her face, or fall into that look in her eyes that she always had when she looked at Trini for too long.  

It felt good because Trini felt like she could finally breathe; Like that constricting, all-consuming love was beginning to give way to the reality that they were in—the reality that Kim would never love her back… She just wouldn’t.

Kim would never love Trini back, and Trini knew this, so she felt as if she were coping with everything well—As well as she could manage.

But then, just when that good feeling felt like it might last forever, just when it felt like maybe this decision needed to be permanent, if Trini truly wished to survive, it didn’t feel good anymore.  

It didn’t feel good anymore, because the time that had passed had done so very quickly, and before Trini realized it, she’d been dodging and dancing around Kimberly for about three weeks. Before she realized it, that open feeling in her chest that had allowed her to breathe, turned into a cold feeling that was hollow and horrible…

Because she noticed that she felt almost incomplete without Kim by her side; Without her best friend. 

She noticed that she turned to say things—teasing remarks, sarcastic jokes—and the person she’d been about to say them to wasn’t there.  

She noticed that sometimes her fingers felt too cold and purposeless without Kim’s own there to hold them, to intertwine with them whenever either of them felt like they needed it. 

She noticed that, a lot of times, she went to text the other girl a reminder— _Don’t forget the bio homework. Remember to meet me at the cliff-top at 5 for yoga. Get some sleep because your eyes are looking more tired by the day_ —only to remember abruptly, herself, that she had created a barrier too thick to break so easily.  

Trini noticed that while she did feel a little less pressure in her chest with the absence of the other girl, she also felt a lot less whole, and so, on a sunny Saturday that marked three-and-a-half-weeks of her self-manifested torture, she was both terrified and pleasantly surprised to see Kim waiting for her outside of detention.

Because, after the first week of Trini’s blatant silent treatment and avoidance, Kim had seemed to understand pretty well that she was not wanted by the other girl.  

She had called and texted and chased after the yellow ranger so much at first, but Trini had remained firm in her resolution to figure out how to get her hurt to stop _hurting so damn much_ , so it was all to no avail.  

And because it was obvious that Trini did not want Kim around—Except that she definitely did and that was the entire problem—the pink ranger backed off like the observant and wonderful person she was. She stopped calling and texting and chasing, and then Trini felt truly isolated again.  

Sure, she had the guys; But the tension in the air during training and classes was palpable, because they didn’t want to pick sides; They didn’t want to fuel the fire. They wanted to ask, but they didn’t want to press.  

So, they continued with their routines as normal.

Trini no longer sat with them at lunch—because Kim was there and that would be detrimental to her coping process—but she still hung out with Zack in the early hours of the morning at the mine, as the sun cast a glow over them that was nearly as golden as Trini’s armor. 

She still talked to Billy and went over to his house to listen to him go on about things she didn’t understand but still loved hearing about just because _he_ loved them so much. 

She still trained with Jason one-on-one, and she did homework with him in the Study Hall period that they shared.

So, yes, she still had the guys.  

 _But_ she didn’t have Kim, and so she didn’t have anything, _really_ , because, to her, Kim was everything.  

Kim was everything, and Trini missed everything about her.  

She missed the way the girl’s eyes crinkled when she smiled, the small mole above her upper lip, the kisses she would place upon Trini’s own right eyebrow—which is where she’d accidentally split the skin during one of their sparring sessions. She missed the warmth she felt in her stomach anytime they were close to one another, anytime they were touching, and she missed having someone so effortlessly be her other half. She missed having someone know her moves before she knew them, and she missed knowing the moves that Kim would make.  

She missed the other girl’s scent, of lavender and lilacs and everything elegant, that was just so inherently _Kim_ , that Trini would recognize it anywhere. Which she _did_ recognize, immediately and firstly, when she was walking towards the main door of the school to attend a detention that wouldn’t be nearly as fun as the ones where she and Kim would pass notes back and forth.

She recognized it on the wind, and so she stopped abruptly in her tracks as she spotted the other girl, who was already staring directly and piercingly at her.  

She felt her breath catch harshly against the sudden lump within her throat. It had been so long since she’d made legitimate eye contact with Kim, and she’d _almost_ forgotten how breathtaking the dark brown of the girl’s irises was, just not quite.  

She dropped her head down to stare at her shoes too quickly to really take in the way they shone, though, as she had become accustomed to doing, and she began to walk towards the door again, in hopes that Kim would just let her, as _she_ had become accustomed to doing.  

There was no such luck.  

Trini ran into the hard and unyielding form of the person she knows so well, and she knew then that her reprieve was over, but that the dull longing in her chest wasn’t; She knew that it was about to sharpen exponentially with each passing second.

She inhaled deeply through her nose as she took a step back, and she kept her gaze on her feet, on the dirtied converse she was sporting.  

“What?” came Kimberly’s voice then, breathy but filled with a fire that made Trini want to flinch back, as if her rage was being fueled by all of the oxygen in her lungs. “You’re still too disgusted to even look at me? You can’t even meet my eyes anymore? Really?”

Trini bit her suddenly wobbling bottom lip, and she swallowed thickly, but she offered nothing in reply.  

Kim scoffed, and Trini just _knew_ that she scrunched up her face in that way she does when she’s frustrated or mad or disbelieving.

“Fucking ridiculous,” the taller girl muttered, before getting louder. “This is getting to be fucking _ridiculous_ , Trini!”  

Trini actually did flinch back that time, the sound of Kim’s raised voice and anger cracking through her chest and reinvigorating her still heart. She nearly bored holes into the concrete of the sidewalk with how resolutely she was staring at it.  

Kimberly shifted her weight between her feet, in the same way that she does when she’s anxious, but then she clenched her fists in the same way that she does when she’s mad, and so Trini really didn’t know what she should do.  

Fortunately, and unfortunately, Kim did.  

“Look at me, would you?” she nearly cried out. “Is it really that hard? Is it really _that painful_?”

Trini wanted to say that, yes, it was, but she knew that she couldn’t and that she couldn’t deny the other girl.  

So, her eyes finally flickered up to catch the gaze of the dark ones staring so heatedly and heartbrokenly back at her, and she felt her entire world shift back into place from where she had been reeling without an orbit for so long—Because even through it all, Kim had always been her rock, the center of her focus and time.  

“There. It was really as simple as that, wasn’t it?”  

Trini didn’t show any form of response, because nothing between them had ever been, or ever would be, simple.  

“Is my face the same as you remember?” Kim continued. “Is it still just as horrible and hateful as you seem to have concluded it to be?”

Trini stayed silent, her heart thudding painfully against the inside of her ribcage, as if it was trying to reach Kimberly itself to apologize for the damage Trini’s mind had done.  

“Oh,” Kim breathed out then. “I see… It’s too much to even look at me, let alone talk to me, right? It’s more than I deserve to even have you meeting my gaze. I don’t know _what_ I was thinking, expecting you to reply to me when you haven’t said a single word to me in three-and-a-half _weeks_.”

Trini didn’t know that a broken heart could still break, until that moment, when Kim’s voice cracked over her syllables, just as her eyes cracked a little to show the hurt she was feeling instead of the anger; She didn't know a broken heart could still break, but then she suddenly did, as she felt her own crack all over again, just to prove her wrong; She found that it was even worse, to experience the feeling a second time.  

Because then they just stood there, sharing a stare that was so loaded with all of the speeches and poems they were never taught to articulate in English class; So loaded with all of the feelings and emotions they’d never learned about in Psychology class; So heavy with a weight they’d never known to exist in their Science classes.  

They stood there, and Trini thought that, maybe, she was going to finally find the courage within herself to say something, to speak real syllables to Kim after so long of silence. But then the bell rang, signaling their tardiness and snapping their attention away from one another, and that build-up of courage was gone.  

Kim stared at the doors with a far-away sort of look in her eyes for a few moments, and when she looked back to Trini’s own, which had never looked away from _her_ , her face became closed off once more.  

“Well,” she said, in a voice much too similar to her old façade for Trini’s liking. “No one can say I didn’t try, can they?”  

She turned on her heel after one last glance over of Trini’s nearly trembling frame.  

But Trini’s instincts were so _sharp_ , so acutely set on every move Kim ever makes, that she found her hand reaching out, of its own volition, to grab at the other girl’s wrist, and it was only her equally as acute awareness of reality that halted its meeting with its intended destination, just barely, with her fingertips left hovering so achingly close to Kim’s skin.  

And Kim must’ve just _felt_ her hand’s presence, because she froze in her spot, with her back turned in Trini’s direction, as a new sort of tension filled the air with something too difficult for Trini to breathe in; Too difficult for _either of them_ to breathe in as they both seemed to hold their breaths within their aching chests.  

Some heavy seconds dragged on, and it was only once Trini managed to wrench her hand away from what it so wished to hold that they both exhaled that pent-up air.  

Kim’s shoulders visibly slumped, and Trini thought she heard the girl sniff just before she lifted them once more and walked off with just as much strength as Kimberly Hart was known for.  

Trini stood there for an almost immeasurable amount of time, after the other girl was gone, and she didn’t even know how long it was before she came back out of her mind, but when she did, she checked her watch and realized, with a start, that detention was nearly halfway over and she hadn’t even shown up yet. Now, obviously, this didn’t truly matter to her, seeing as she only started going to be with her friends, but since she actually _was_ assigned it, for certain things that she’ll never speak of, she couldn’t have the school emailing or calling her parents.  

So, she muttered a low, “Shit,” before walking briskly into the building, towards the classroom that detention was always held in.  

She made her way through the school with swift steps, her heart still beating haltingly against the inside of her throat, and she was just about to turn the corner of the hall that led to her destination when a pair of rough hands shoved at her shoulders, sending her stumbling forward and sideways into the lockers on her left.  

She caught herself easily, thanks to her newly enhanced balance and agility, but she was shaken by how off-guard someone managed to catch her, when she usually could sense someone’s presence from fifty feet away.  

Her head snapped towards the direction of her attacker to find none other than another faceless cheerleader that she had really had no time to learn the name of.  

“What are you doing out of detention, brat? Couldn’t tell your left from your right well enough to get there?”

Trini didn’t answer, as usual. She, instead, clenched her jaw tight, and then did the same with her fists, because it just _would_ be this day that she had to deal with this shit.

“I’m talking to you!” the girl shouted at her next, shoving at her shoulders again, but having no effect this time since Trini was fully aware and prepared.  

“And I’m not talking to you,” Trini stated simply. “I’m leaving now.”

The girl was almost so surprised by Trini speaking that she just let the yellow ranger pass without a fight, but, honestly, when has Trini ever been so fortunate?

“Oh, no you’re not.”  

And then skinny fingers were wrapped around Trini’s wrist, and she was being spun around abruptly and backed against the other wall of lockers.  

“Look, what do you want with me? I’m not doing anything to bother you.”

The girl, pale and tall and thin, stared down at Trini with glinting blue eyes of pure malice, and even with her knowledge of her own skills and readiness, Trini gulped a little.  

“Oh, but you _are_. Because, you see, I happen to be a member of the Green Team, and as a concerned occupant of Earth, I want to remove as much trash from it as possible. It’s damaging to life and the environment, and so I’m going to have to kindly ask you to remove yourself from the planet.”  

Trini thought, then, that no matter how thick her skin became, or how tough her armor happened to be, she’d always feel the sting of such words. But she also knew—she _knew_ —that she was better than this girl, and that she couldn’t show any of the subtle pain that reverberated through her bones; So, she kept her face as impassive and unimpressed as it always was.  

“Yeah, not likely,” she said with as much venom as she could muster. “Are we done here?”

The girl’s nostrils flared, and suddenly her arm was raised and pressing into the column of Trini’s neck.  

“Look, here, you bitch,” she snarled. “Just because you suddenly became friends with Jason Scott and Kimberly Hart, doesn’t mean that you’re all that. You better watch who you’re talking to.”  

Trini raised her eyebrow, feeling none too threatened.  

“And who exactly am I talking to?”  

The forearm pushed even further into her throat, and Trini started to feel her fingertips tingle in that same way they always do when she’s ready for a fight.

“Someone worth more than you. So, show some damn respect.”  

Trini shrugged as best as she could.  

“Nah. I’m good.”

The slap that was bestowed upon her face was fast and fierce, and she was so thrown by how swiftly the pain began to radiate through her skin that she didn’t have time to prepare herself for the punch that came her way, next, to land right in the center of her abdomen.  

Now, Trini knew that she could literally break this girl in half if she wished. But she also knew that a code of the rangers was that they were not to use their powers for personal reasons… And since this felt _pretty damn personal_ to her, she was torn between defending herself and just taking the hits, that were surprisingly more painful than she would’ve expected.  

But then, as if to help her decide, another slap landed sharply upon her right cheek, drawing her out of her inner turmoil before she had the chance to choose her plan of action, and snapping her attention back to the present.

This time, the cheerleader’s nails scraped harshly against her skin, and the sting from the scratches was felt immediately, which fortunately, or unfortunately, allowed Trini’s instincts to kick in for her. The next time the girl’s hand came down to deliver another blow, Trini caught it firmly in her grasp.  

Blue eyes went wide as the girl instantly began to squirm in an attempt to wrench her arm free, but Trini was a damn power ranger, and so that was a fat chance.  

“Okay, so, here’s what we’re going to do,” Trini said then, her voice low and menacing in a way that most didn’t know it could be. “I’m going to let go of your hand, and I’m not going to give you the ass whooping that you deserve, because I honestly do not have the energy. And _you’re_ going to run away with your head down and your tail between your legs, and you’re never going to bother me again.” She raised her eyebrows at the suddenly stricken girl. “You think that will work?”  

She got a jerky nod as her answer, and so she followed through with her statement and released her grip on the girl’s wrist. A few still moments passed where said girl just rubbed at her bruising skin with a disdainful glare, but then Trini took a step forward and she stumbled away to retreat down the hallway, disappearing around the corner of the hall that led to the football field.  

Trini sighed heavily as soon as she was sure that she was alone, and the adrenaline pulsing through her veins and pounding in her temples faded just slightly enough to let her feel the pain from her newly acquired injuries.  

It let her feel how her stomach ached from the impact of the girl’s knuckles, and how her left cheek burned from the pure force with which the girl’s open hand collided with it. How her right cheek stung harshly against the scratches it had acquired, and how her upper lip was beginning to feel heavy and swollen.  

It let her feel all of these things, and then it led her to realize just how tired she was of having to treat her wounds all of the time.

She released another sigh and glanced at her watch again to see that even more time had elapsed since she had been rushing to get to detention. She hesitated for a brief moment, in contemplation of what she should do, and then decided a few seconds later that she would just wash off the blood from her lips, that she could taste, and the blood on her cheek, that she could feel, after it was over.  

So, she began walking _again_ towards the proper classroom, hesitating only slightly before the door once she reached it, as she realized that every eye would turn to her and her disheveled appearance as soon as she entered.  

She took a deep breath, counted to three, turned the handle, and made her way inside as confidently as she could under the scrutiny of her fellow misfits, and more importantly, her team members—her friends.  

She avoided eye contact with every single person in the room, including the supervisor, a relatively incompetent teacher she didn’t have for any of her classes, and she strode to her seat at the far end of the classroom.  

She plopped down rather heavily into her chair, pulled out a notebook, that was relatively blank, and a pen, and then she began to doodle, just as she did every detention.  

A few minutes passed, and she thought for a moment that she would actually get out of there without being questioned by anyone—seeing as there were only about fifteen minutes left—but then the familiar sound of paper whipping through the air caught her attention, and so she, subsequently, caught the folded note that flew towards her.  

She didn’t look up to see where it came from, because she could feel the four pairs of eyes on her, but she did end up undoing its folds and creases to read the carefully written question on the inside.  

 _Are you okay?_  

The handwriting was distinct.  

Jason.  

Despite herself, she glanced up, meeting the boy’s eyes briefly before using her pen to write back.  

_I’m fine. Don’t worry about me._

With a flick of her wrist, the note was gone again, but it only took a few moments for it to be right back in her hand.  

_I always worry about you. Doesn’t matter the circumstance._

Trini felt an abrupt resurgence of emotion swell within her chest, and she thought for a moment that she might choke on the lump that had seemed to form with the reading of each letter written so sincerely.  

 _You shouldn’t_ , is what she had just written back, but never got to send, because, suddenly, the door to the room burst open, revealing the cheerleading coach in all of her fuming glory.  

“Trini Gomez!” she roared. “Where is Trini Gomez?”  

Trini raised her hand lazily, disinterestedly.  

The coach marched down the steps, straight past the supervising teacher, who had stood up as if to do something, and right to her. She pointed a slightly crooked finger at Trini’s face and drew her bulky shoulders up.  

“You’re coming with me.”  

And then once more, Trini’s wrist was being grabbed, and she lost her grasp on the paper in her hands. It fell to the table with a light tap as she was pulled a little too roughly from her seat.  

“Where are you taking her?” Supervisor Man asked. “Detention is almost over. Can’t it wait?”  

The coach then whirled on _him_ , though she kept her grip on Trini’s arm firm.  

“No, it cannot _wait_ ,” she said fiercely. “Because this particular student has injured one of my girls.”

Trini rolled her eyes despite the fact that she already knew what this was about.  

“I’m sure there’s been a mistake,” the teacher tried to placate. “There’s no—.”

“Are you trying to tell me that I don’t know when one of my girls is hurt by someone?”  

“W-Well no, of course not. But maybe—.”

“I didn’t hurt her,” Trini spoke up as the man stuttered.  

The rage was back to being directed at her.  

“Oh, you didn’t? And so how do you explain Bridget coming back with bruises on her wrist shaped like fingers and a story about some girl name Trini who made them while threatening her?”  

Trini shrugged.  

“I don’t know,“ she began, keeping her voice lazy and nonchalant.“Maybe by telling you that she was actually the one who accosted me in the hallway when I was on the way to detention. Or that she didn’t let me leave when I told her I was leaving. _Or_ that she said things, and then I said things, that somehow led to her slapping me, multiple times might I add, and eventually, when she tried to do it again, I grabbed her wrist.”

The coach’s eyes were sharp in their scrutiny of her face then, and after a few seconds of stillness, she seemed to zero in on the swelling of Trini’s upper lip, on the blood staining the pink skin there, on the claw marks on her face; She seemed to realize that at least some of what her cheerleader had told her was not true, or that her cheerleader had at least omitted some of the truth, and so she took it down a few notches.  

She released Trini back to herself, and then inhaled deeply, puffing her chest out in an attempt to lessen her embarrassment.  

“I’m going to get back to you, Gomez, and if I find out you’re lying to me, there will be consequences.”

Trini stared straight at the woman, and then she stared after her as she left.  

The room was completely silent even after the door shut, which was something entirely uncommon for detention, and Trini _really_ wanted the floor to just crack open beneath her and swallow her whole, like it almost did at the end of their battle with Rita.  

“Go get cleaned up, Sweetie,” Supervisor Man said to her gently, breaking the still stupor everyone was in.  

Trini took full advantage of the escape opportunity; She was through the door without another second spared.  

She wandered the halls a bit, and, thankfully, the restroom she came upon was empty, so she didn’t have to worry about dealing with any other stray cheerleaders lingering around for the sole purpose of finding someone to torment.  

She pushed the door open and made her way to one of the sinks, while letting out a heavy breath that seemed to echo off of the porcelain of the tiles just as deafeningly as it rang within her ears. 

Her subtly shaking hands came down to grip the counter’s edge in a reaching and rare moment of instability, and she allowed her eyes to close slowly just for a bit so that she could try to regain some of her composure; And if she was honest, she was a little afraid to look into the mirror before her.  

But she steeled her nerves anyway and connected her gaze with her reflection’s own to see exactly what she had become used to seeing in the past month; Herself, but a more worn down version, with a sort of sickening pallor to her skin and dark circles encompassing the sunken sockets of her eyes.  

The nearly dried blood on her upper lip, and not nearly as dried blood on her cheek, stood out so starkly in contrast to the rest of her face that it was kind of disconcerting, and so she tore her eyes away from herself to instead begin to wet a paper towel.  

She was _just_ beginning to put soap on said paper towel when the door opened, causing all of her muscles to tense instinctively and in preparation. Her body went rigid as it pressed itself even further into the edge of the counter, and she froze in her movements as her eyes stayed down in hopes that the person would just ignore her and go about their business.  

The air shifted behind her, and a gentle presence hovered over her shoulder in a way that she would always recognize, and then she didn’t know whether to feel relief or dread.  

Her gaze moved slowly up the mirror to meet Kim’s.  

“Are you okay?” the girl asked quietly, much softer than when they had spoken an hour before.  

Trini nodded simply, leaning forward to look at her cheek more closely and pressing the wet towel to it. She hissed lightly and flinched away from herself, in a manner that belied her reassurance.  

“Let me,” Kim said, still gentle, yet offering no room for argument; Trini hesitated anyway. “Trini, just let me help you. We don’t have to talk.”

A few seconds passed before Trini did end up offering Kim the paper towel, but when she did, she shifted so that she could be better positioned to face the girl. Her heart started to beat more erratically against the confines of her chest, and she had to clench her fingers into fists by her sides to get them to stop shaking as Kim stepped closer.  

That same familiar scent filled Trini’s nostrils once more, and a painfully nostalgic sensation ached within her bones. She inhaled deeply, to try to regain her bearings, but found that it only made things worse; She found that it only made the instinctive warmth within the depths of her stomach grow.  

Because she had always associated Kim’s scent with home. She’d always associated it with protective hugs and cold nights spent huddling together in warm beds; With the soft skin over a pulse point that her nose came to nuzzle against regularly after their first two months of friendship.

Kim had come to be Trini’s home away from home, the person she felt safest with, and having her be so suddenly gone, and then so suddenly close again, was throwing the yellow ranger off balance.  

Because she truly just _didn’t know_ how to act around the girl anymore, and it was so sad, because, at one point, Kim was the only person Trini could really be herself around; It was so sad, and Trini knew that it was all her fault, which just made it sadder.

“Turn your head,” Kim instructed calmly as she finished washing the swollen skin of Trini’s upper lip. “I’m going to clean your scratches.”  

Trini did as she was told, for once, and she tried not to shiver as gentle fingertips brushed over her hurting skin delicately; As those gentle fingertips hovered there for a moment so still that it almost became something more, until Kim added pressure, causing Trini to inhale sharply through her teeth and screw her eyes shut. Her eyebrows furrowing, she bit her lip and told herself to suck it up; She was a power ranger, damn it, she shouldn’t be so affected by a couple of scratches on her face.  

“Coach mentioned Bridget,” Kim said then, her voice harder, steelier. “Was it her that did this to you?”

Trini shrugged lazily, reopening her eyes to set them onto the hollow of Kim’s collar bone.  

“If that’s what she goes by,” she replied carefully, slowly. “I don’t know her name.”

The hollow of Kim’s collarbone then deepened as the girl inhaled a slow and unsteady breath, and Trini realized suddenly that she’d actually broken the barrier; She’d spoken to Kim finally, and it was far more anticlimactic than she had expected.  

Her eyes trailed upwards a little to watch Kim’s jaw tick a few times, but they fell just as quickly as they rose when the taller girl’s head tilted forward a little more, probably for a better view of the cuts.  

There was silence again, and, though it wasn’t as tense as a few moments before, it still felt off; It still felt frustrating.

But Trini was never the brave one between them both, and so she didn’t try to do anything to keep their communication going, despite how much she wanted to; Despite how much she missed being able to tell Kimberly anything and everything.  

“Can you get a new paper towel?” Kim asked, breaking the quiet once more, her tone back to the specific kind of softness it only ever held for Trini. “This one is too dirty now.”  

Trini nodded along, and they both turned away from each other, Kim, to throw the wasted towel away, and Trini, to grab a new one. 

But the yellow ranger calculated her movements wrong, so she twisted her upper body too quickly, which caused that dull ache in her abdomen to sharpen exponentially in intensity.  

An involuntary and traitorous groan slipped from her lips, and her outstretched hand, that had been reaching for the paper towel dispenser, came back down of its own volition to fall upon her stomach’s toned muscles.  

Kim’s eyes snapped back to her; Trini just knew it; She could feel them.

“What’s wrong with your stomach?”  

Trini inhaled shakily before shaking her head.

“Nothing. It’s fine.”  

Kim stepped closer, crowding Trini in a way that the girl would’ve hated if it had happened to be anyone else.  

“It’s not nothing, and it’s not fine,” the taller girl stated firmly. “Show me.”

Trini bit her bottom lip; She was highly aware of the dangerous territory they were treading into.

“Trini,” Kim continued then, pointed and pressing.  

Trini’s eyes snapped up, but whether it was because of the way Kim said her name or just because they would always seem to be able to find Kim no matter the circumstance, she didn’t know.  

“Show me.”

Trini bit back the groan that tried to rise in the back of her throat, and she actually contemplated stamping her foot for a moment, just to let out some of her exasperation, but then she opted, instead, to just sigh heavily before complying.  

She curled her fingers around the hem of her shirt, and she scrunched up the fabric within them before pulling it upwards just enough to reveal the bruising flesh of her stomach.

Kim’s facial expression shifted then, as she took in the sight, and it represented so many different types of emotion at once—Concern in the crease and furrow of her eyebrows. Anger in the clenching of her jaw and downturn of her lips. Pain in the swirling of her eyes—that Trini found it hard to look at.  

“Did she do this to you too?” Kim asked her then, breathlessly. “Did Bridget do this?”

Trini swallowed thickly, and after a moment, she nodded hesitantly.  

Kim’s eyes slid closed as she inhaled slowly through her nose, while curling her fingers into tight fists, and she held that breath for a while before releasing it in a more controlled manner. Her jaw ticked, and she reopened her eyes to stare at Trini as calmly as she could manage. 

The yellow ranger was honestly surprised by how well the girl had managed to contain her temper until she heard a dark, “I’ll get to her later.” 

She should’ve seen that coming, honestly, and she was just about to open her mouth to protest when Kim’s gentle fingers brushed against the skin of her abdomen, sending all real thoughts and words from her mind in the timespan of a millisecond. Her muscles tensed and flexed instinctively underneath the touch, and she suddenly felt too overheated against the coolness of Kim’s fingertips.  

“We should probably get you some ice. Or to the morphing grid. You know it accelerates our healing.”  

“I’m fine.”  

Kim’s eyes moved their focus from Trini’s abdomen to Trini’s eyes, and their gazes connected wholly. Kim stayed silent as she looked to be contemplating something.  

“Are you?” she asked eventually, simply.  

And Trini _wanted_ to say yes. She wanted to say that she was perfectly okay. But she knew that the question was much more loaded than that, and she knew that if she said yes, then she’d have to add “liar” to her list of descriptors. 

So, she broke their stare, as always, and she bit her tongue, as always.  

Kim then removed her fingers from Trini’s stomach, and even though Trini wasn’t looking very thoroughly, she could see in her peripheral vision, and feel in her nerves, how much the girl hesitated before placing them upon her tanned cheeks instead.

The touch felt much more intimate than the ones used to clean her wounds, and Trini didn’t know if it was the air that was suddenly too thick to breathe in, or if she just choked on the sudden rising of her heart in her throat, but she couldn’t seem to find any air to inhale.  

In fact, she was put into such a daze that when Kim added slight pressure to the bottom of her chin to tilt her head upwards, she couldn’t remember how to resist. Their eyes met, closely and calmly, and Trini’s aching chest shuddered with her next exhale.

“Are you?” Kim repeated, softer somehow.  

Trini’s teeth dug into her bottom lip, a bright white pulling on eraser pink, and she searched Kim’s face fully, for the first time in a long time—too long.  

The pink ranger seemed somehow older than Trini remembered, what, with the wrinkles around her lips more defined and the darkness around her eyes starker in how it contrasted her skin tone. That shine in Kim’s dark irises, that Trini had known she would let blind her from the minute they met, was dimmer than the last time she had really looked for it; And, altogether, Kim’s eyes had a more exhausted sort of way about them too; The confidence that Trini, and the general population of Angel Grove, so loved about them was faded; In its place, wariness crept in.  

“Are _you_?” she breathed out suddenly, the abrupt realization that maybe she wasn’t the only hurting jarring her senses harshly.  

It was Kim’s turn to frown, and, as she did, she deepened those lines around her mouth and filled Trini in on how they had come to form. Her throat bobbed thickly against a lump that hadn’t been there just seconds before, and Trini couldn’t help how entranced she was by the sight, because she was entranced by everything that Kimberly did, always.  

“I mean…” Kimberly shrugged, her eyes shifting around their surroundings a little before reconnecting with Trini’s. “I guess you’d have to define ‘ _fine_.’”

Trini’s stomach felt so cold as she watched Kim’s face start to crumple underneath the weight of the collapse of her mask, of her strength.

“Because if you mean happy, or content, or even well enough to function properly, then no, I’m not ‘fine.’ Then I haven’t been ‘fine’ in a long time.”

Kimberly’s hands were suddenly gone from Trini’s face in the next saddening second, and Trini automatically missed their warmth; The cold within her stomach spread.  

“I mean, how _can I_ be fine?” Kim continued, her voice growing more desperate by the second as she put some distance between them. “When my best friend just up and walked out of my life as if she were never an integral part of it; As if I were never even a part of _hers_.” The taller girl’s voice cracked harshly, like glass finally giving under an ever-present weight. “When a person I’ve come to love has been ignoring and avoiding me as if I have the fucking plague or something.”

A rogue tear streaked down Kim’s quivering cheek, and Trini realized, startlingly, that she had only ever seen the girl cry, _truly cry_ , twice before this moment between them.  

The first was when they had lost Billy, for that one terrifying hour; When they’d been so much younger and reckless and further apart; When none of them had really known one another, but when they had suddenly realized that they would switch places with the boy in half a heartbeat if they were given the chance; When Billy then came back, all gasping breaths and aching lungs, and hugged them in a rare show of physical reassurance that he was there, that he understood too…

The second was when Kim’s grandmother had passed away; When she had happened to come to Trini’s clifftop at three in the morning while the shorter girl was still there; When she had looked out across the horizon with numbed eyes and blank features, until Trini had opened her arms without question and allowed her to fall apart right there in their shared embrace…  

Trini had only ever seen Kim cry twice, because Kim was always so stoically strong for the rest of them. Kim had years of practice in hiding her emotions, because, for so long, she hadn’t needed them as the Queen Bee, she hadn’t wanted them.  

Emotions were too much of a weakness to show when you were at the top of things, when people’s eyes were always on you; Emotion meant you were human, and if you were human, you could be overthrown, just as all human queens and kings are eventually.  

So, Kim didn’t cry, really.  

But, then again, she did.  

She was still human after all.  

She was still human, and she proved it again when a rough sob broke past the barrier of her lips to knock all of the wind from Trini’s lungs.  

“I can’t be fine,” Kim said. “There’s no way I can be fine when you look at me so blankly all of the time, like you don’t even have the energy to hate me, let alone _like_ me. I can’t be fine when one second we were so close, and then the next we were so far away from one another, and I still don’t even know _why_.”

Kim ran a hand through the short locks of her dark hair, her slender fingers tangling themselves within the strands briefly as she tried to find something to get a grip on.

“God, I just—I wanna know what I did _wrong_ , Trini!” She shook her head then. “Because I know that there’s something, it’s just that—that I was trying so hard to be _good_ , you know? To redeem myself… I’ve been trying so hard to show you guys that I care about you, that I won’t ever do to you what I did to Amanda. I love you guys… I love _you_ , Trini, and I thought that maybe you—I thought that…”  

She looked up to stare into Trini’s eyes with a searching gaze as she trailed off, and she exhaled a breath that shuddered through her chest visibly.  

“Well, I guess that doesn’t matter now,” she whispered. “I just really need you to tell me what I did so that I can apologize, or fix it, or _something_. Just—please give me _something_ , Trini, that can help me understand why things are so broken between us. Why we’re so far apart.”

A few seconds passed, and Trini found that she couldn’t handle the weight of Kim’s eyes on her, so she placed her own on her shoes. She subconsciously ran her fingers over the bruises on her abdomen before pressing her fingertips into them lightly in an attempt to use a different kind of discomfort to distract her from the kind in her chest.  

The pounding of her heart against her ribs was almost loud enough to drown out everything else, but not quite, because Trini then heard Kim breathe out an “Oh my God” with enough pain to get her to look up once more; She found a different expression morphing Kim’s face, when she did, an expression of horrible realization.  

“Oh my God,” the taller girl said again, no louder than before, her eyes watching Trini’s fingers on her stomach. “Do—Do I—Is it because I _remind you of them_?”  

Trini’s eyebrows furrowed deeply over her gaze.

“What—?”

Kimberly drew away from Trini then even more so, as if in horror of herself and what she might do to the yellow ranger just from being in such close proximity. 

“Do I still remind you of those cheerleaders that torment you?”  

A painful sort of panic seemed to begin to overwhelm Kim’s senses then, as her eyes grew wider and wider in shame and guilt and everything Trini hated to see on the girl’s face.  

“I do, don’t I?” Kim nearly sobbed once more. “I remind you of your bullies, because I used to be so much like them. And it doesn’t matter how much I try to change, really, because I’ll always be one of them in your eyes.”

Kim took a step forward again, her face distraught and her cheeks moist from the fat tears that had finally begun to fall from their precarious positions on the edges of her lashes.  

She seemed to plead with Trini to just answer her, whether it be to refute or reassure her, but Trini couldn’t. She couldn’t because she was in so much shock at how Kim always managed to blame herself for things, at how Kim never thought anyone else was to blame because she’d spent so long blaming people when she shouldn’t have.  

Trini knew that Kim didn’t want to make that mistake again, that she didn’t want to blame others for a wrong that was her doing, but Trini also knew that since Kim’s fall from the top of the social hierarchy, the girl had been able to be the great person she’d always wanted to be, the great person that Trini had grown to love.  

Trini knew that Kim was a _great person,_ who had done an awful thing, and that she was so hellbent on remaining an awful person in everyone’s eyes because she felt that she didn’t deserve redemption.  

But the thing was, that if there were actually any sort of rules for the guidelines of redemption, and if Trini had written them, Kim would’ve already been free of the guilt that so plagued her. Trini would’ve already allowed the girl to feel finally free, because she’d done so much good in the wake of her one bad thing, and she deserved happiness.  

Kim deserved happiness and redemption and all of the good that the world had to offer, and it was just so ridiculous for her to think that Trini would ever associate her with those girls again; Those horrible and hateful girls that build their self-esteem off of others’ backs.  

Sure, at one point in time, Trini _would’ve_ lumped Kimberly Hart in with that cold mix of people, but not now, and not ever again.  

Not after they’d saved the world together.  

Not after Trini had witnessed how caring Kim truly is—In the way she listens so intently to Billy when he speaks, as if to prove to him that he’s the most important person in that moment; As if to prove that there was nowhere else she’d rather be…

In the way she drops by Zack’s train car and trailer whenever she can to see how he’s doing, to see how his mother is doing.  

In the way she offers Jason understanding whenever the sadness and regret of their old lives and social statuses catch up to them.  

Trini couldn’t ever associate Kim with those people again after the girl had spent so many nights pulling Trini from her own nightmares and panic attacks. Not after Kim had adjusted her sleeping schedule to be as opposite of Trini’s as possible just so that she could stay up as long as needed for the girl. Not after Kim bought Trini donuts when she was having a bad day, or took a hit for one of them in battle, or patched them up after one.  

Trini could _never again_ say that Kim was like those cheerleaders, and she believed this so wholly, so vehemently, that the words came spilling from her lips of their own volition.  

“You are _not_ like them,” she said firmly, fiercely, without doubt. “You haven’t been like them in my eyes since we first met— _Really met_.”

Kim blinked at her through the sheen of tears in her eyes.  

“You’re too _caring_ , and _kind_ , and _brave_ to be like them. You’re too thoughtful, and soft, and _strong_ , and I can’t ever comprehend why you don’t see that about yourself. I can’t understand why you still won’t forgive yourself, or see yourself as wonderfully as the rest of us do, even after seven months of being on the team.”

Her words were coming out on their own at that point, and she couldn’t do anything to stop them; She found that she didn’t want to; Not if they were going to give Kim the reassurance she so needed.

Because Trini realized, then, that she had been selfish. She had been selfish in thinking that she was only hurting herself by drawing away from Kimberly, when, really, she had been hurting the whole team; When she had, maybe, been hurting Kim the worst out of all of them.  

She didn’t stop to think about what her abrupt retreat from Kim’s side would do to the other girl; She was so damaged herself, that it was hard to see what damage she was doing.  

But she saw it now—in the glistening of Kim’s eyes, and the wobble of her lips, and the brokenness of her heart—and she knew that it was now that she had to fix it.

So, she tried.

“You’re just—You’re so _amazing_ , Kim,” she continued, taking a sudden step forward and seemingly taking the girl by surprise as teary eyes widened. “You’re amazing in everything you do, for us, for the _team_ , and I want so badly for you to see that, but I don’t know how I can show you. I don’t know how to get you to see yourself in the same way that _I_ see you.”  

Trini inhaled raggedly, and she held her breath in the back of her throat. She clenched and unclenched her fists, shifted her weight between her feet, and then released the air from her chest heavily; All while Kim watched her in stunned silence, her mouth gently agape, her tears still falling.  

A quiet blanketed over them, broken only by the faint dripping of the sinks and the scuffing of the steps in the halls that signaled detention’s end.  

“If you see me so wonderfully, why have you been acting like I don’t exist?” Kim asked then, her voice almost too soft and broken to hear. “Why can’t you even look me in the eye anymore? Why can’t you be around me without looking like you want to die?”

Trini swallowed thickly, because she couldn’t seem to come up with an answer.

She tried, though; She really did.

She tried to find any reason that she could give for her actions. She tried to find the words that would finally allow Kimberly to believe that she was one of the best people that Trini knew. She tried to be eloquent, for once in her life, because she knew the truth was the hardest thing to get people to believe.  

She tried to just think of _something_ to give the other girl as an answer.

But no matter how hard she tried, the only thing on the tip of her tongue was the urge to spill her secret.  

Those three words, that tasted so bitterly sweet; That she so wanted to speak into the air for once, instead of merely thinking them— _feeling them_ —whenever she and Kimberly interacted.  

That she so wanted to scream out loud; Whisper into the other girl’s ear, against the other girl’s lips. That she so wanted to write into poems and across the skies. That she so wanted to engrave into a mountain and tattoo on her ribs.  

That she wanted to free from her mind and chest. That she wanted relief from the weight of.  

 _God_ , she wanted to free herself from their weight.  

She was just so worried that doing so would continue her streak of selfishness. 

Because what if saying her feelings out loud only helped _her_? What if it hurt Kimberly more, hurt their friendship more, hurt the _team_ more?  

Would Kimberly call her stupid, for ignoring her because of something so irrelevant—because she would never even have a chance?  

Would saying her feelings out loud make things even more strained between them? Would their connection to one another dwindle down to only being fellow rangers—to only being through the morphing grid?

Would Kimberly hate her?  

Trini didn’t know…  

She didn’t know what would happen if she spoke her thoughts, exposed her secret, left her heart out in the open after so long of its concealed solitude, and it didn’t help that saying her feelings out loud had never been a strong suit for her anyway.  

It didn’t help that she had never been very adept at stringing the right syllables and sounds into sentences coherent enough to get her point across. She didn’t know how to communicate with others very well, and so she had found out a long time ago that it was best for her to just remain quiet, even while under inquiry.  

It was usually her go-to plan of action, and that moment would’ve been no different if Kim hadn’t just looked so _sad_ , and worn, and broken down, as she stared back at Trini hopelessly; Trini would’ve tried to end the conversation right then if she hadn’t been so scared that sealing her lips in that moment would cause the other girl to shatter right before her very eyes.  

She didn’t think she could take that—She _knew_ that she couldn’t—so she screwed her eyes shut, she bit her bottom lip, she clenched her fists so tightly that her fingernails created small, crescent-shaped indentions in the skin of her palms.

“Trini, wh—.”

“I love you,” she finally blurted, weak and cracked.

The bathroom went deafeningly silent then, horribly still.  

Trini’s eyelids felt glued shut from fear—of rejection, of disgust, of abandonment; Her jaw _ached_ from how harshly she was clenching it, and a sickening sort of cold began to spread through her body again, beginning in the pits of her stomach and seeping into her bones as tendrils of a tortuously slow speed.  

She swallowed roughly, around the urge to vomit, and she willed herself to open her eyes—To _woman up_ and take in the sight of Kimberly’s reaction.  

She did so, miraculously, without much more hesitation, and was met with an expression that could only be described as wholly and utterly shell-shocked. Her stomach lurched painfully and something within her chest constricted her lungs.

“What?” Kim breathed out, taking a half-step forward.  

She searched Trini’s face, with eyes as wide as saucers, her lips parted and her chest rising and falling almost raggedly. She looked as if her whole world had just been flipped over on itself, had just been sent careening off of its axis; Trini knew the feeling.  

“I…” Trini inhaled slowly through her nose, and exhaled her next words through her lips. “I love you.”

The reutterance was no easier than the first time for Trini, or for Kim, it seemed, as the pink ranger nearly staggered backwards in response. But there was no yelling yet, no cruel laughing or taunting, and so Trini counted that as a small victory.  

Her throat bobbed uncomfortably, in resistance to her resistance of the emotion swelling within her, and she tried to clear it a little as she continued.  

“I love you,” she repeated once more. “And I know it sounds stupid, but that’s why I’ve been avoiding you.”  

Kim’s face finally showed some more feeling then, in the way her eyebrows wrinkled with confusion, breaking free from the stupor just slightly.  

“You’re just so—I just—I can’t handle _being around you_ as often anymore. Because any time I’m around you, and you smile, or laugh, or speak, it feels like I can’t breathe. It feels like my chest tightens and my throat closes up, and I don’t remember what it is that I’m supposed to be doing at the time; My brain, like, short-circuits or something.”

She looked down at her feet, at the dirty tiles underneath them, to try to hide the sudden tears that had welled within her eyes; She sniffed lightly and willed the burning away.

“And so I thought, that, maybe, if I put some distance between us, if I gave myself some time to learn how to deal with everything, my feelings would fade. I thought that putting distance between us would _help_.” She laughed in pure and mirthless self-deprecation. “What I _didn’t think_ was that it would hurt twice as damn much to be without you than it does when I’m with you. And what I _never even considered_ was that I would hurt you in the process too.”  

She glanced up to reconnect their gazes, and she felt her face shift with a desperate sense of pleading.

“I _swear_ that I never meant to hurt you, Kim. It just honestly never even occurred to me that you would be so affected by my absence, because for so long, no one even noticed that I was around. Hell, not even you. Which isn’t your fault obviously, but I’m just saying that I still haven’t gotten used to people caring… To people noticing when I’m not there. To people _wanting me to be there_.”

A lone tear broke free from her dammed tear ducts, and it sliced down her cheek in a solitude that felt spiteful and taunting.

“And I understand if you don’t want to really associate with me anymore, after what I’ve just told you. I get it, I promise. But at least know that I’m sorry, Kim,” she finished with a sigh. “I’m sorry that I hurt you. That I hurt the team. I’m sorry that I made things so complicated. I’m sorry that I still can’t shake these feelings off so that we can just be teammates, _friends_.”  

Trini’s voice cracked, in an imitation of her heart, and she inhaled shudderingly as she tried to wipe away the tears that were continuing to fall in haphazard paths down her face.  

Long, heavy moments passed, and Kim just continued to watch her, quietly, without moving a muscle; Trini didn’t know what to think, but she was beginning to find the noiselessness of the room too hard to bear, too hard to endure.  

“I’m just gonna—I’m gonna go…” she said. “I’m sorry.”

She moved to walk past the other girl, to get out of there with her head down and her heart beating dreadfully within her chest, but she was stopped by the abrupt wrapping of a hand around her wrist, as seemed to be the habit of the day.  

She was spun around on her heel as she looked up again in surprise, and then suddenly there were calloused hands, slender fingers, framing her face, and she didn’t even really have the chance to question what was happening before soft lips were pressing against her own firmly.  

Shock flooded through her system, hot and near-paralyzing, and she was sure that she had just lost all ability to function, when, luckily, her instincts found a way to take control, allowing her hands to move of their own volition to Kim’s waist only a half-second later.  

And then she kissed the girl back, with all of the longing and passion and regret for lost time that she could convey. She pulled the girl closer to her, until their bodies were completely flush against one another. Her arms wrapped fully around Kim’s waist, and Kim’s hands moved further back along her scalp to tangle within the dark locks of her hair, and the entire world felt as if it stilled. 

All of the turmoil, and confusion, and pain, between them was gone, and in their place was the clearest comprehension Trini had ever experienced.  

It was as if everything she’d ever misunderstood about herself, about _love_ , became obvious. Like one second it was missing, there was a void, and then, like the dawning of a new day, or the forming of dew upon blades of grass, it was just there.  

It was there in this kiss that was so _soft_ , and sweet, and relieving of any type of hurt, and Trini wanted to cry even harder because of how special it felt. It was so patient, and kind, and it was full of so, _so_ much love and adoration.

She truly never wanted it to end, but the burning of her chest and aching of her lungs signaled her need for air far too quickly than she would’ve liked, and so she had to pull away, slowly, reluctantly.  

She pressed a few more lingering pecks to Kim’s lips as her eyes reopened languidly, and all of the remaining air in her chest was stolen from her once more at the sight of the brilliant sparkle the other girl’s eyes had regained.  

The hands in her hair added slight pressure to her scalp, and they tilted her head up gently as Kim pulled back even more so to gaze down at her fully. Dark brown irises flitted between Trini’s eyes, and then across her features.  

“I love you too, you idiot,” Kim whispered into the space between them then, after a few moments of adoring Trini’s face. “God, I’ve loved you for so long that I’ve forgotten how it felt to not love you.”

That same air, that Trini was fighting so hard for, hitched in the back of her throat, and her bottom lip began to wobble again dangerously.  

“I don’t wanna just be teammates, or friends…” Kim continued, her thumbs wiping at the moistness of Trini’s cheeks gently. “I want to be more. I want to be the one who you come to when you’re sad _and_ when you’re happy. I want to be the one who gets to hold you at night, and the one who makes your nightmares go away. I want to be the one that you trust the most to look out for you in battle. I want to be the one who patches you up, who kisses your wounds.”  

Kim leaned down then to press a feather-light peck upon the scratches Trini had forgotten were on her cheek, before trailing her way to the corner of Trini’s mouth; And, though she could turn her head a mere centimeter to reconnect their lips, Trini didn’t want to miss a single second of the moment they were sharing by closing her eyes.

"I don’t want you to hurt when you’re around me,” Kim whispered. “I want to make you happy.”

Kim proceeded to place gentle kisses all over Trini’s face—on the swell of her cheekbones, the arches of her eyebrows, the top of her forehead—and then she nuzzled their noses together, her eyelashes fluttering delicately against Trini’s own as she sighed lightly through her nose.

Trini sighed too, as a calm washed slowly over her, her heart seeming to begin to settle for the first time in months.  

She blinked up at the other girl with wide eyes, that were so awed and hopeful and shining, as if she couldn’t really believe that any of what was happening was real.  

And honestly… She couldn’t.  

Because, for so long, she had been drilling the notion into her head that Kimberly was not the one that was going to love her back—That Kimberly was not the one that she would get to hold, or kiss, or love—But then there she was, doing everything she had thought to be impossible.  

Kim was wrapped up in her arms, and Kim had kissed her.

Kim had said she _loved_ her…  

The realization of that fact settled warmly into the chill Trini had become accustomed to feeling in her bones, and it spread through her slowly, until, soon, it was all she could feel.

This feeling, of contentment, was intoxicating, infectious, and so, Trini smiled next, bright and beaming, because she just couldn’t contain it any longer; Her lips curved upwards, and they stretched out happily across her face in a way that almost ached; It had been so long since she’d let herself grin.

“You do make me happy,” she said in reply, earnest and sincere. “More than anything and anyone else.”

Kim smiled then, too, and Trini felt the world start spinning again.  

She had always loved Kim’s smile. It was one of the things that had hooked her from the start…

Because the lights seemed dimmer, somehow, in comparison to how Kim shined when she smiled; Trini had always known this to be true. 

But this time it felt different. This time, Kim’s smile was shining and soft all at once; Bright but not overwhelming; Gentle and kind; The epitome of pure happiness and only for Trini to see.

“Good,” the taller girl had concluded softly, leaning down to press their foreheads together. “I hope it will always be that way.”  

And Trini can say with complete and utter certainty—as she feels arms suddenly wrap around her waist from where she’d just shifted into another stretch before training, as a gentle laugh floats melodically into the air because of how she had startled, as soft lips press against her sweaty cheek from behind her—that it will be.

**Author's Note:**

> And that's all I've got folks. I really hope it went alright, and that it was pretty comprehensive. I would appreciate any type of positive feedback or reception. Once again, please follow me at flairfatale on Tumblr. Thanks for reading, and until next time!


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